


A Sound Half Felt in the Bones

by unsettled



Series: And How it Works is This: [1]
Category: Inception (2010), RocknRolla (2008)
Genre: Crossover, M/M, Threesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-29
Updated: 2010-09-29
Packaged: 2017-10-12 07:36:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unsettled/pseuds/unsettled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, Yusuf remembers how it all worked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sound Half Felt in the Bones

What Yusuf mostly remembers is this:

Eames comes home with a boy in tow - nothing unusual, although they tended to run more toward stocky and half drunk, and this fellow is neither. Loops an arm around his neck and drags him forward, says singsong and full of barely suppressed laughter, "Johnny here's going to spend the night with us, yeah?", but there's no question in it really. Yusuf raises his eyebrows and the boy - Johnny - looks at him from under a fringe of dark hair with an expression that can't decide if it's cocky as hell or ready to run.

Shrugs. "Where'd he find you?" he asks Johnny, who answers with an utterly straight face, a curious kind of challenge,

"Maybe I found him," and Eames laughs, just about crows, he's so delighted.

"Listen to him!" he says. "Come on Yusuf, he followed me home, practically. Can't I keep him? I'll take care of him and everything," with a grin wide enough to split his lip open again. "He can't be more trouble than your stray."

" _My_ stray is nothing of the sort, and perfectly well behaved," Yusuf says, and really, he's about to settle in for a good long, half teasing argument when Eames plops down on the sofa and pulls Johnny with him, tucks him against his side and looks at Yusuf from under lowered lids with a smug grin. Yusuf watches the way Johnny leans into the contact and _oh, Eames, and his soft spot for broken things_ and he probably wasn't going to get anything useful done tonight.

"Ok," he says, and Eames hums, contented.

"Ok what?" Johnny asks, and Eames turns to him, slides his hand up to tangle in the mussed hair and steady Johnny as he kisses him, long and slow and heated. Yusuf watches, and wonders if Eames has the first clue what he's playing with.

Probably not.

Eames pulls Johnny over, drags him onto his lap and keeps kissing him, nips at earlobe and jaw line and neck, and while it's all very appealing, Yusuf would prefer to be in a bed. He stands and kicks the toes of Eames' fine shoes, which earns him both Eames' attention and a glare. "I'm going to bed," he says, and Eames nods.

He presses a hand to the taut set of Johnny's back before he turns, right between the knife sharp shoulder blades.

He's drifted into a light snooze by the time they find their way into the bedroom, and he doesn't even notice until the mattress dips. He looks up at Johnny, leaning half over him with bruised looking lips and an expression of hesitancy he can see even in the near nonexistent light. Johnny bites his lip, and Yusuf wraps a hand around his wrist and pulls him forward, just as Eames slides a hand up his back.

Johnny falls against him gracelessly, eager, and Yusuf finally gets a taste of that mouth, begins to understand what it is about this boy that drew Eames so strongly. He's sweet and tasting of smoke and old blood and kisses like he wants to ask for so much more.

His memory becomes hazed with time and sleep and lust after that, but he can imagine how Johnny might have whimpered into his skin as Eames kissed his way down his back, how Eames might have run his hand up Yusuf's thigh in his usual familiar manner, how he himself might have looked at both of them, drawn out and breathless and beautiful above him, and thought he was very lucky indeed.

He can guess too how they ended up tangled in the sheets; but he doesn't have to, because every morning he wakes to the same arrangement, to Johnny pressed against him, nuzzling his shoulder and sending warm puffs of air across his skin, caught and cradled between Yusuf and Eames, content for at least a little while. Wakes to Eames, leaning over Johnny's back with a sleepy smile, brushing his hands across the hair on Yusuf's cheek, dropping a kiss on the nape of Johnny's neck. Sometimes, there's another warm weight curling against his other shoulder, and if he turns his head there's the cat, purring and kneading his skin with sharp little claws. Much in the same manner Johnny nips at his shoulder when he wakes. Incorrigible beasts, both of them. All of them.

It's not a bad way to wake up.

They make a fractured sort of sense together. Yusuf and Eames - they were never quite - anything really, other than what they were, which … was. They somehow never got around to discussing the how and why of the turn things took, where it became as common and casual to end up in a single bed, and whether they spent part of the night exploring each other or simply sleeping, wrapped around each other, it made no difference. Where it was as usual to offer a kiss as a hand as a smile as an endearment, and there was never any bearing on which meant most. They never dissected it, and never needed to.

Maybe it would have made more sense for Johnny to unbalance that existence, would have shown some acknowledgment of how the world seems to work for this to have fallen apart; and yet, it persists. They move about each other with an odd half awareness, a sense of timing that would give any outsider pause, at the way they can always reach out without looking and have to hand who they need. Or who needs them. There's something like a sound, Yusuf thinks, that's in the air between the; or maybe it's just the sensation of a sound, the vibration of stirred air that presses against their skin, that they react to without thought.

It seems, after some reflection, that Johnny is the pin at the center of them, because it always ends the same - Yusuf and Eames, both, with their thoughts settled on Johnny, with their hands linked and Johnny's between their palms, between their breaths, between their bodies; but it feels only as if that's where he best belongs.

There are hollows inside Johnny that beg to be filled, though he'd never ask for it, never show sign he feels them. But it's there, in so much that he does; in the way he leans in their direction every time they walk by, every time they speak, and Eames has added the habit of slipping his thumb into Johnny's belt loop when he shifts him aside, palm lingering longer than actually needed; of resting his chin on Johnny's shoulder as he looks at whatever Johnny's hands are involved in, be it book or food or ivory keys; of tapping his foot against Johnny's toe whenever they sit across from each other, and of bumping knees when they sit next to each other, and Yusuf sees all the tiny ways in which Johnny's frame eases, in which the tension within them all eases.

There's all the times Johnny wakes unsettled, is sharper and harder and his words leave a bitter, sour taste in the back of Yusuf's throat. When the cat flattens its ears and flees for the high refuges of fridges and cabinet tops. When Johnny chain smokes through packs, hands shaking as he fills the rooms with languidly moving air, shaped in swirls of grey, and when Eames moves toward Johnny, he leaves a space of vacant air behind, smoke curling away from the edges of the void. He'll watch Johnny twitch for a breath, then raise a hand and pluck the current cigarette from Johnny's fingers, from Johnny's mouth; presses his own lips tight and stubs it out into an overflowing ashtray. He'll lean in, curl his fingers against Johnny's chin, against the hollow of his throat, and take a breath of poison straight from Johnny's lungs. Will pull him up and pass him to Yusuf, who's been watching, as usual, as always, and Yusuf will hold Johnny as lightly as he can, waiting for his palms to start bleeding on the edges of him. They never do, but he always thinks this might be the time they're not enough.

There's times too, when Johnny grins so wide it's impossible to look at, when he wheedles and cajoles and - not that it takes more than the _suggestion_ to convince Eames - and somehow they end up at some club, some bar, some place full of bright lights and loud crowds and temptation of all varieties. He's not sure how it happens, that he's always the one approached, that there is always the assumption that Eames and Johnny are only interested in each other; and then Yusuf will smile and shake his head, and Johnny will materialize at one elbow, leaning into him, comfortably, and Eames will appear at the other, cupping his hand around the elbow in a blatantly possessive gesture. And there's no doubt, then, how much room is in this connection of theirs.

But those aren't the things he remembers, because right now, they haven't happened yet. They might, they could, they will, but they haven't yet.

What he remembers right now is how he laughed himself nearly sick over the expression of baffled, wide eyed surprise on Eames' face when Johnny waltzed over the next morning and neatly stole his mug of still steaming coffee from right between his fingers, from right under his very nose; drank half of it in one gulp before he leaned over and kissed Eames' cheek, bright eyed and full of mischief.

It's an auspicious beginning.


End file.
